Sanity
by Xeno Major
Summary: What defines a Human? What separates us from the animals? Intelligence? Emotions? No, the line is sentience. As instincts rage and fight, I must keep my sanity. If not, I am simply another animal.


**Author's Note: This was bouncing around in my head for a while, figured I'd get it out. **

**Let me be clear, there is very little chance of this being updated. I said the same thing about Aria's Advisor, but the plot for this story simply _cannot _be high-quality, and this is much better off as a contemplative one shot . This is, for now, _strictly_ a one-shot.**

* * *

I've heard the rumors, of course. Everyone had.

The second swine-flu they called it. It was an outbreak of _something_, infecting the East Coast with a range that simply kept spreading, defying even the worst predictions, spreading at a nightmarish rate. Apparently European travellers had brought it across the Atlantic, and flights were starting to be stopped as Asia caught the bug, while public warnings were flashed, safety measures enacted, the whole enchilada, so to speak. It was travelling as fast as the planes themselves if not faster, and experts claimed the first outbreak had only been a day ago.

I'd ignored it, as I do with these things. I'd been around the world a few times, vaccinated against most everything, and I had a healthy immune system. During the swine-flu mania, my boarding school at locked down, nobody in or it with our numbers, but I missed it. Going home, hanging out with all my old friends, all who had it, still missed it. Went out to my brother's place in Wyoming, just before his swine-flu symptoms became known, missed it again.

In my mind, there was nothing to worry about.

Given my college education starting after the summer, I flew out to my new school on the East Coast for a summer program, combining crew camp with the basic 'get to know your new school!' program.

There was nothing to worry about, I insisted. Old hand-me-down duffel bag in hand and all my important stuff in my backpack, I'd strolled through the airport unafraid, as people around me wore surgical masks. Security guards were even starting to break out gasmasks, looking like demonic hounds as they clutched weapons.

I frowned as the heightened security check passed me through. AR-15 derivatives were not broken out of storage for flu pandemics. The mood was tense, and I thought that even if this flu thing was a joke, looting might actually be a problem. The security guards seemed to think so, as most of the airport shops had been closed, locked up, and blocked off. Guards patrolled, seemingly everywhere at once. I had no idea how they were managing to keep up the manpower without exhausting their resources, but that was unimportant compared to the real problem.

People were scared.

You could say it was in the air, but I've usually been pretty good with identifying the mood in a place. Body language clues, tone of voice, the general atmosphere, all those little specific reasons coming together to terrify a nation.

It's nothing to worry about, I said again, muttering under my breath.

I'd gotten into my taxi and sped off to school, observing the lack of traffic, the huddled masses rushing to and fro, nobody looking at each other, all the unsubtle hints that worried me.

Nothing to worry about.

I saw some statistics later. Scary shit. Original outbreak was nearby, in fact. I was waltzing casually through ground zero.

My gut tells me to fear this unknown, to hide and wait. My brain dismisses the uneasiness, citing the need to go to school and make an impression.

This is the rest of my life here, it argues. Time to make a good impression.

* * *

The School is empty when I arrive.

Nobody moves. Nobody home.

I shout, searching for somebody, anybody, but no one responds. The buildings are empty, some with lights on, some with lights off. Trees _shift_, swaying hauntingly with the wind. It would be cliché, straight out of a horror movie, if it were not for the fact that it _was_ happening. Shadows _jump_and move, changing shape, and I see monsters in the shadows. Daemons, shrieking in the quiet dusk, the wind replicating the cries of the damned as they writhe in agony, I reassure myself that this is all natural, just a normal night scene.

I don't usually use flashlights. The jarring light against dark contrast ruins what little natural night vision man has. Sure, it takes a little while to adapt to the dark, especially for those horror flick lovers, but it can be done.

But right now, I want a flashlight so damn badly.

I'm hard to scare, I tell myself. It's just a summer program prank, or the guys already out on the water rowing. My brain, once my ally, betrays me, chiding me that nobody would be rowing this late in the day.

My vision fades in and out. My stomach hurts.

I swear and blink, trying to refocus my contacts. I succeed, only to curse more when they improve my vision massively, overloading my eyes with input. For a brief moment, I see the grain of the half-sawed down tree. I can see the marks from a fall on the concrete, an old bloodstain that was never removed.

I blaspheme; letting loose a torrent of cusses that would've made the old guys on the construction crew holler in admiration, shutting my eyes frantically.

I sit down, leaning back against a building with my backpack in my left hand and my duffel on my right, blind, and unable to see anything.

The sounds magnify, and I am uncertain if that is due to me focusing on hearing or something else. All I know for certain is that I was never able to hear leaves rustling quite that loudly before.

Speaking of skin, mine's on fire. Feels like the time, well, when my skin _was on fire_.

Compared to this, that felt like a tickle. This is a true flame, burning and scorching my every pore like I had been doused in lighter fluid. I wouldn't be surprised, I think dissonantly, if I wake up without any arms.

I'm blind, freaking out, my skin is burning, and everyone is missing. My guts plummet, that sinking feeling you get when you finally realize you are in trouble.

"Another one over here!" A voice calls, sounding so close that I'm startled.

Feet pound on pavement, getting closer, as my head swims in dizziness. I'm glad to be off my feet, as my head lolls to the side. At this point, my tense and thoroughly fucked-up body is only supported my duffel bag. My limbs are suddenly weak, my legs abruptly consumed with muscle spasms.

"Help…" I moan, reaching out sightlessly, my voice trembling.

Hands grab me, and I instinctively grip my backpack harder, refusing to let go.

"SIR!" the voice _shouts_, reverberating in my head. "SIR, I NEED TO GET YOU TO A HOSPITAL!"

_Damn it man!_

"Quiet, you bastard…" I grumble. If I weren't so damn messed up right now, I would chuckle. I sounded like an old man right there.

More hands, pulling me away from my duffel as I'm pushed onto a stretcher. My bag dangles precariously, pulling at my shoulder. More pain, tearing at my arm, so I stretch my other arm and yank my bag back up and onto my lap.

Voices, too, so loud and hammering that I can't understand what they're saying. I catch a few words, mentions of 'wards' and 'Infected.'

The word is emphasized and I can practically hear the capital letters.

Infected? I can't be Infected, I protest.

I don't know if I said the words out loud or not.

Everything blurs out, pain encompassing every other sensation. My hearing fades out into a dull roar, my eyes squeezed shut, as the stretcher slams into what must be an ambulance.

* * *

Days pass in a haze, doctors hovering around my bed at first, then trickling away, until my checkups consist of a single nurse in a gasmask, looking at me then running away. Soldiers are ever-present, standing guard in gasmasks and rifles while the doctors fumble clumsily in HAZMAT suits.

The walls (what I can see of them past the doors anyway) are slowly starting to be accumulated with filth. Pristine, clean, sterile, they collect blood and bodily fluids in between the lucid moments. It's a mystery how the filth gets to walls until I see a soldier wheeling a strapped gurney past; it's occupant/prisoner screaming and flailing with corroded limbs. As the soldier races past, the patient throws up, a veritable comet of liquid and semi-liquid ooze and bile spewing all over the walls.

I try not to resist, but the doctors are acting different for some reason. There's no care for my pain threshold, as they neglect all anesthesia. I don't know where the anesthesiologist is, but somewhere, Hippocrates is rolling in his two thousand year old grave. They've strapped me down, belts crisscrossing across arms and legs, efficiently immobilizing me.

I scream; my voice somehow becoming deeper and higher pitched. When I try to speak, I growl in a gravelly voice, grainy from disuse; but when I shout, I screech, an animalistic howl that usually makes the doctors back up, and the soldiers move closer. The burning pain is pervasive, _searing_through my nerves like a thousand bursts of napalm, conducted by whooping hellions that take unholy delight in my suffering.

In a rare period of clarity, I think, oddly enough, of _Twilight_, and the three-day transition to becoming a vampire. I imagine that it feels something like this, but days are sadly not the limit of this transformation.

For it is a transformation, of that I have little doubt. Sanity and lucidity are fleeting, but when I can think clearly, my brain rushes, as if to make up for it's previous limitation. My limbs are still convulsing occasionally; when I managed to break a strap and force my hand to the side of my gurney-bed, I wrenched and yanked at the metal rail running along the side, ripping it clean from it's bolts. After I did so, a soldier rushed into my room, yelling into a radio before he smashed his rifle butt into my head, knocking me into blissful oblivion.

I have no idea how or why this is happening to me. I'm changing, mutating, bones stretching and muscles tugging with a pain beyond any previous sensation. I can only be happy that time passes so haphazardly.

* * *

Quiet.

It's so much of a change that I think I've lost my hearing at first. The frantic hospital is silent and still for once.

My head turns, slowly, and the rustling of the stained sheets gently inform me that my hearing isn't gone, not yet. My head pounds, but the pressure is not a concussion, more akin to a good punch. It should fade soon, I tell myself. My arms and legs are sore, the meat of my thighs especially.

The straps around my arms are gone, though shreds of them remain. I'm tempted at first to believe I ripped them up, but I wasn't able to reach any of them after my first attempt, so that's clearly impossible.

What the hell happened here?

I softly swing my legs to the side of the gurney, wincing as I put a little weight on them. My clothes were, of course, taken when I was checked into the hospital, but I'm not wearing a hospital gown. Naked as the day of my birth, I'm initially a little annoyed by the lack of clothes, but that is soon replaced by a shiver as I release just how damn cold it is in here. Jesus, what'd they do, blow up the heating system? I spit, and spit again, trying to clear the gunk from my unused throat, but there's no water anywhere near, and all the taps I try just eject brackish slime that makes me even more worried.

There's stuff everywhere, tattered cloth and scraps of metal and plastic scattered everywhere. I'm starting to think a bomb when off, with how much stuff there is lying around, but the structure is still stable.

I look out the window, seeing morning slowly breaking out over the city's skyline. Some of the traffic lights are still on, far below me, and I even see the headlights of a couple of cars, but they are at jaunty angles, as if the driver crashed and just left the damn car where it was. The lights are blazing bright, so intense that I think they are fires at first, until I realize that they are not moving, dancing, like a fire would. Almost like miniature suns, I cannot look directly at them.

This is fucked up, man. Where are all the people? So quiet…

I move away from the window, trying to focus on the immediate. First priority is clothing. Given that this is a hospital, the doctors' locker room must be around here somewhere. At home, the changing rooms were by the OR, and I seem to be in… ICU? Why am I in ICU? I was only sick for a short period, nowhere near the length needed to be transferred to ICU, right?

Or maybe the quarantine ward was too full. Now that's a sobering thought. So many victims, so many Infected, that they ran out of room… I need to find out what happened, and soon.

There's blood splashed on the walls.

I crouch and look a little closer. It's semi-old, at least a few days gone; though some of it is new, and it glistens in the weird half-light that seems to illuminate the entire hospital. I sniff cautiously, and my nose picks up the definite scent of blood... but only faintly. Whatever this sickness did to me, it messed up my sense of smell, because I can only barely detect that, and it's fucking _coating_the wall.

Moving on, I'm starting to get a little worried about the lack of bodies. For how much blood was spilled here, dozens of people must be dead… but I haven't seen a single body, just a lone, torn-up arm.

Finally, I find a sign that is marked 'Changing Room.' Unfortunately, the door is locked. I grab the doorknob and shake it as hard as I can, but the damn thing refuses to budge. Furious, I spin, lashing out with a side-kick. I don't expect it to do anything, but the door splinters, everything except for the hinges breaking with a loud _crack!_

The door slams into the ground with a thunderous crash. I stare, stunned that my side-kick actually worked. I'm nowhere near strong enough to kick down a door, yet here it just happen.

But then come the cries.

I wheel, backing into the changing room as a dozen shrieks spring up, echoing through the gore-blemished hallways. The screams are bestial, high-pitched wails that scare the shit out of me. Leaning down, I scoop up a slightly bent piece of metal, quickly glancing to the sides to make sure there are no other doors to allow entry.

By the unsteady light, I see a wall of flesh charge towards me, some kind of animal I can't fully make out.

"Aright, you bastards, bring it _on!_" I roar, my voice growling with crap, as I quickly swing the two-foot long piece of gurney rail in my grip, trying to get a feel for the weight and balance.

The wave slows, but still comes on, breaking out of the pitch black and into the half-light of the changing room as I step into it, swinging the metal with a two-handed grasp akin to a baseball grip. As the metal shoots forward, I hear a confused yelp from the front-runner as he tries to slow.

I put all my force into the damn blow, and I'm a pretty fit guy, so I expect my target to go down with a thud. Instead, the rail hits his head, seeming to me like a gentle stroke, before rupturing the thing's neck, sending its neck spinning away almost comically.

I gape, before stepping up again, with another swing. The light is lucidly making the nature of these things known to me, but I can't focus on that right now, so I take another's head off.

This one's head bounces off the doorframe, cartwheeling into the crowd of milling humans, all looking like confused sheep. They've stopped charging, and the lead couple growl at me, gargling spit and acting aggressive. It's like an animal, a dumb, rabid animal. I ball up my off hand, absent-mindedly noting a sharp stab of pain as I do. Rage boils up inside me, and any emotions I had before are tossed to the wayside.

How _dare_ they attack me?

I step forward, holding the piece of rail aggressively, and I roar. Or I try. Instead of a deep, hearty roar, I give up a bone-chilling scream, which resonates with such a pitch that the creatures fall back instinctively, practically falling over each other trying to get away from me. They flee, vanishing around corners and in doors.

Charging forward, I discard the rail and storm after them, rounding corners quickly, before tackling the closest one down. Hands flash with furious speed as I claw at the man-thing with bare fingers, impossibly ripping off chunks of flesh, removing an arm, most of his stomach, and then his head with the flick of an unnaturally quick wrist.

Then I move on, chasing down the next creature as it tries to run. I'm moving _fast_, legs churning with more raw power than I've ever had before, leaping a solid ten yards to take down another monster. My hands should be torn up and bloody from all the scratching strikes I instinctively use, but some how they are not. My mind loses track of the violence, and I'm treated to a slideshow of horror, as if I can't control my own body as it impulsively reacts to the disturbances.

Finally, I stop moving, and find myself crouching in a darkened corner, growling under my breath as I come to. I'm speckled with blood from all the dead people, and I start shivering uncontrollably as the howling wind cruelly reminds me that I am not wearing any clothes.

"What the fuck…" I whisper as I slowly rise to my feet. The blur of the past few minutes is confusing as hell, but I manage to piece together the hazy memories to understand just what an _animal_I was there. As I think on those actions, emotions rise up within me, foreign things that I have never encountered before. An alien urge to kill and devour flesh, but not this not-flesh that the monsters have, combined with a deep compulsion to go to a high vantage point. There, I intuitively think, I will have the best chance of hunting.

With pure force of will, I yank my head out of those strange impulses, driving myself to return to the locker room, to find clothes, and leave this nightmare of a hospital.

I have to turn the broken door to pull it out, revealing a second door behind it. This one luckily, doesn't have a lock, so I'm good. Handling the door turns out to be easier than I thought. Whatever the hell happened to me, it must've augmented my strength quite a bit. The fact I was able to _kick down a locked door_ was the first indicator, I guess. Lifting this door, broken though it may be, was as easy as if it was made of plywood. Well, maybe not that light, but pretty close. I can tug and pull the door easily, but I can't, for example, lift up the door by it's end and hold it away from my body. And yes, I actually did try that.

After that revelation, I continue on my quest to find clothes, pushing open the inner door, and into pain.

I jam my eyes shut as I fall back, snarling in agony as my retinas _burn_. Through my eyelids, the light scorches my eyeballs.

Painpainpainpain_PAIN_

Burning, roasting like a chestnut, like a thousand suns inside my _flesh!_

I scream, howling with such intensity that it resonates back to me, bouncing out the doors and through the walls. My hands rocket up to my eyes, and I instinctively try to rub them, overriding the intellectual knowledge that this will only make it worse. My fingers only make it to my cheeks when more pain slices through my blind suffering.

Now the pain has spread to my face, and I feel warm liquid ping onto my arms. Frantically, I slam my closed fists down onto the floor, hearing something crunch as I move my arms as far away from my eyes as possible.

For an all-too-long moment, I contemplate the unthinkable.

_If I cut my eyes out, I won't feel pain from the light…_

No! _Never!_ C'mon you dumb, lazy bastard! You act like this, and you might as well die! The pain would be _worse_ from cutting out your damn eyes, you stupid idiot, and you don't even know if that would stop the pain. Giving in to that blasted urge…

I can't remember how long this went on. Every second the pain seemed to worsen, and I wanted to give in to the dark temptation of clawing out my eyes with my bare fingers, if necessary.

Finally, that neglected voice in the back of my head spoke up.

_Light is the problem, yes? So get _rid_ of it. _

Simple, no? Reaching around, I grasp at whatever loose objects I can find, seizing a long, heavy something by it's skinny end, before hurling it with all my rage-enhanced strength at where the light should be.

A crumpled thump-crash resounded, and the light ceased. Luckily for me, it looked like that had been the only source of light in the entire locker room.

Again, I lay there, moaning as my retinas slowly recovered.

My eyesight must be more sensitive, I reflect numbly. So… they're better? I didn't really _see_ any better when I looked out the window after waking up. It looked like a normal view from the fifth story.

Before I ponder that any further, however, fluid runs, hot, down onto my neck.

I sluggishly prize my eyes open, the light level much more endurable. With the overhead light broken, the familiar half-light fills the room, even though I just shut the second door. Experimentally, I open the inner door, watching as the half-light becomes brighter, but not unbearably so. By the time the door is fully propped open, it looks as if the lights were on.

Just _how_ sensitive are my eyes? Slumping down against the wall, I idly run my hand along the indentation where I thumped my fists into the floor in an attempt to distract myself, as blood drips down my cheeks.

Low, drawn out scratching reaches my ears as I sit there. Were I more rested, I would tense, but by now I've dealt with enough shit to not care. The scratching stops, however, when I stop pawing the ground.

_Hmm…_

Another paw. A scratch. A faster strike and the sound of tile being rent asunder resounds in my ears.

I bring my hand up, and gaze wearily at the extended nubs of bone and claw that my fingers have become.

My mind has suffered so much abuse that it ignores the strangeness, and I sit there for a minute, fascinated by how bone and nail have seamlessly merged. My skin is not bleeding at the joining place, implying…something. All of my manual dexterity is still present as well, and I twirl my talons (for what else could they be?) and wrists speedily, my long-lingering wrist aches gone.

I sigh, too weary and tired to avoid confronting this horrible truth.

Naked, sitting in a torn up locker room in a ransacked hospital filled with zombies, I regard my hands and wearily realize that thinking this Infection was a transformation was correct.

I'm one of _them._

Inhuman strength, enhanced vision, and gloriously impossible _talons?_There is no other conclusion to be reached.

Maybe I'm sentient and lucid now, but what about in an hour? Will I still be me, or will my sanity have fled like the other's has?

Can I fight this with force of will, or will I succumb to the rage and alien instincts and join the other mindless animals?

The final thought that occurs to me is one that I never thought I would express in my lifetime. I'm a young college student, after all, I had only briefly thought about death; and only then with the filter of 'legacy' to cover up the gory details.

"How long do I have to live?"


End file.
